The Veneration of Wonder
The Veneration of Wonder is a form of music used during marches and military engagements originally devised by the elf Vadane Foggyfences. The form guides musicians during improvised performances. A singer recites nonsensical words and sounds. The entire performance should be passionate, and it is to be very loud. The melody has long phrases throughout the form. Only one pitch is ever played at a time. It is performed using the cebela scale and in the arile rhythm. Throughout, when possible, performers are to locally improvise and alternate tension and repose.
- The singer always does the main melody.
- The Veneration of Wonder has the following structure: a lengthy verse and a lengthy chorus all repeated two times.
- The verse is consistently slowing. The singer's voice ranges from the low register to the middle register. The passage should sometimes include a rising melody pattern with sharpened second degree as well as glides, mordents, rapid runs and arpeggios, sometimes include a falling-rising melody pattern with grace notes and trills and often include a rising-falling melody pattern.
- The chorus is extremely fast. The singer's voice stays in the middle register. The passage should always include a rising-falling melody pattern with rapid runs, staccato and legato.
- Scales are constructed from twenty-four notes dividing the octave. In quartertones, their spacing is roughly 1xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxO, where 1 is the tonic, O marks the octave and x marks other notes. The tonic note is a fixed tone passed from teacher to student. After a scale is constructed, notes are named according to degree. The names are fathinu (spoken fa), thili (thi), fomire (fo), fela (fe), aweme (aw) and yaniye (ya).
- The cebela pentatonic scale is constructed by selection of degrees from the fundamental scale. The degrees selected are the 1st, the 4th, the 11th, the 15th and the 21st.
- The arile rhythm is made from two patterns: the mathuva (considered the primary) and the emu. The patterns are to be played in the same beat, allowing one to repeat before the other is concluded.
- The mathuva rhythm is a single line with thirty-one beats divided into five bars in a 3-5-4-11-8 pattern. The beat is stressed as follows:
- | x x - | - - - - x | - x - x | x x x - - X x'- x - x | - - - - x - x - |
- where X marks an accented beat, ' marks a beat as late, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
- The emu rhythm is a single line with four beats. The beat is stressed as follows:
- | - x'x X |
- where X marks an accented beat, ' marks a beat as late, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
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